


so impossible to dream

by adamantine



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam/Shiro will be there for a breakup scene (just like canon), Dark Fae Keith (Voltron), Fae & Fairies, Fantasy, I will add more tags as I decide on the tone (not sure yet how angsty this will get), Inspired by Maleficent (2014), M/M, Mage Keith (Voltron), Mage Shiro (Voltron), Magic, Prince Shiro (Voltron), Rating May Change, but the second movie... but also it's totally not the world of maleficent, the aliens are fae
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 12:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21119054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adamantine/pseuds/adamantine
Summary: Dark hair and fair skin—at first glance, the baby looked much like his father.Then he opened his eyes.OR: The one where the aliens are fae, and Keith is half dark fae.





	so impossible to dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This doesn't have an underage tag for a reason. ✌️ The reason being it's a slow burn (for the characters at least) and we’ll be time-skipping at least once, probably twice. Shiro is ~4-5 years older than Keith in this fic, aka about their final canon age gap.

Dark hair and fair skin—at first glance, the baby looked much like his father.

Then he opened his eyes.

His irises were an unnatural violet set against yellow sclera—Krolia’s eyes in miniature. They would need to be glamoured. In the right lighting, the violet could pass for a deep blue like his father’s; a little nudging with glamour would keep them that way. The yellow of his sclera she would glamour to white. These changes were easy and painless. Harder to change were the small bumps at his temples and the protrusions on his back. The bumps were horns; they would grow throughout his life, signaling his age. The oldest dark fae had complicated patterns and thick, strong horns (Krolia had swirling patterns of magenta on curled, eggplant horns; the patterns and size of her horns signaled she was of a middling age by dark fae standards). The protrusions were the start of wings and would take a few years to fully grow out.

She could use glamor to hide them, but horns and wings weren’t like changing his eyes. The boy would still feel them even if he couldn’t see them. It would make him curious and curiosity was dangerous. She had to do something drastic to keep her son safe from those that would harm him. The cruelty of the procedure made her want to double over and weep.

Krolia unsheathed her iron blade with gloved hands. Her son, her baby, looked up at her with trusting eyes. She couldn’t stop a small sob from escaping her when she broke that trust.

She wondered as she turned her blade against her only child if his wings would have been violet and magenta like hers. And what of his horns—would they have curled around his head like hers or would they have grown tall like his grandfather’s?

Her son wailed in betrayal, his cries so loud she was certain his father could hear them from deep in the forest where he hunted. His father was a good man saving her, despite the fear and loathing between their kinds, when he found her wounded in the forest, bleeding out from where a dozen iron arrows had sunken into her flesh. He had removed each one, careful not to leave any traces of iron behind, and let her stay in his cottage as she recovered. That had been nearly a year ago and it was easily the best year of her life. She wished desperately that it could last forever but for the last few weeks, it had begun to fall apart. Her presence put them all in danger; they had already been found once.

When the procedure was done, Krolia wiped the corners of her eyes with her sleeve and went to the bookcase. Stuck inside a well-worn cookbook was a letter she had written a week earlier. She pulled it out and left it near her son’s cradle. She waited until she heard the telltale footsteps of her beloved reaching the edge of the cottage before kissing her son goodbye.

When the boy’s father opened the door only the scent of lavender remained.

⚜

Keith was angry. He didn’t want to be tested but even the village orphan was expected to show up when a Garrison mage came calling. All of the area children aged ten to fourteen were required to be there and Keith was still a few months shy of fifteen. The mage was here to see if any of them had the talent needed to be offered a place at the Garrison as an apprentice mage. The younger children didn’t have to attend just yet—their families could wait a few years before sending them to the Garrison—but in rural areas like Keith’s village testing only happened once every four years.

The tests would happen in the village square. While officially only a handful of children were invited to the testing, nearly the entire village was there to watch. It wasn’t every day that they got to see a real-life mage. Few people ever visited their village; it was remote and isolated—away from the main roads and without anything special to offer.

At the center of the village square was a young man with dark hair. In Keith’s mind, mages were wizened old men with long white beards—like in the fairytales his father used to read him—but the real mage in front of him was nothing of the sort. He couldn’t have been much older than Keith, though he was much taller and broader.

“My name is Takashi Shirogane,” the mage introduced himself.

The villagers reeled; whispers broke out. This was no ordinary mage _but the king’s adopted son_. Keith couldn’t imagine why a prince was sent to their small village as a recruiter. Surely he had better things to do like fancy balls to attend or wars to win—whatever it was that princes did.

Keith met Prince Shirogane’s eyes and realized he was the only person standing. The rest of the villagers—the children included—were kneeling to show their subservience. Keith scowled and stood tall; he kneeled to no one.

Rather than offending Prince Shirogane, his face lit up in amusement, as if he and Keith were sharing a private joke. This was more disarming than seeing the entire village on their knees.

“Please, there’s no need to kneel. At the Garrison, everyone is equal. We don’t differentiate between the son of a king and the son of a blacksmith.”

_What about the orphaned son of the village outcast?_ Keith thought bitterly. He stepped back to stand as far away from the prince as he could.

No one, Prince Shirogane assured them, was expected to pass every test. Magic users had natural affinities. They might find some tests easy and some impossible. It didn’t mean they would never be able to do magic they didn’t have an affinity for—overcoming their weak points would be a focus of their studies at the Garrison.

Keith gazed at the sky as the prince droned on and on about magic and the Garrison. Keith expected nothing from the day. The Garrison wasn’t for people like him, no matter how much Prince Shirogane claimed all mages were equal and talk as if anyone could be accepted. It was an undeniable fact that most Garrison mages were the children of nobility, and rarely ever the heirs of their houses. Prince Shirogane was no exception, as the king’s adopted son he would be passed over in the line of succession for the king’s true-born son, Prince Matthew.

“For our first test please come gather a feather from me. Don’t worry, there are plenty of feathers for everyone.”

Keith watched as the others scrambled to grab a feather from a small leather pouch in Prince Shirogane’s hands. James nearly knocked over the tiny ten-year-old Hesperia in his haste to shove his way to the front of the line. Keith was last to pick. He stuck his hand in the pouch and grabbed blindly for a feather.

“That one’s a raven feather,” the prince said cheerfully.

“I knew that already.” He knew it before he even took the feather out of the bag.

The prince looked at him curiously. Keith met his gaze with the fierce intensity that normally earned him a scolding from adults. The prince didn’t seem to take any issue with it.

Nothing would come of this day, Keith reminded himself as he scampered away from Prince Shirogane’s curious stare. By tomorrow, the prince will have forgotten about his entire existence.

“Hold your feather in the air, at eye level is best. Now, I’m going to ask you to let go and try to stop your feather from hitting the ground without touching it again. You will likely have to try a few times before you can get it to float in the air, like this.” Prince Shirogane let go of the feather: it stayed perfectly in the air as if it was resting on a table.

The children wasted no time in starting the test. The first to succeed was James: after only a few attempts he managed to make the feather wobble in the air near his knees before it drifted to the ground.

Keith held onto his feather and closed his eyes and found himself soaring above a forest in autumn, the leaves falling and fading, with a walled city along the horizon. He liked flying—the feeling of the wind beneath his wings and the warm sun on his feathers—but he wasn’t flying for pleasure: there was a purpose to it. The dark-haired mage that fed him well had trusted him to carry a message. He would carry out the request because he liked the mage and, more importantly, because he found that resisting the mage’s magic was more trouble than it was worth.

The ground began to spin. Keith let go of the feather and leaned over to keep himself from hurling.

“Are you all right?” The prince asked as the other children began to whisper. Faintly, as though there was a wall between them he heard James make a snide comment about craving attention that would have set Keith off on a normal day.

The feeling of flying above the forest was so real to Keith that he ached for it like a missing limb. He grabbed onto the feeling in desperation, not wanting it to be taken from him.

“What’s happening?”

“Woah!”

“Look, mama, I’m flying!”

Screams and shouts brought Keith to reality. The entire group of children—himself included—and the prince was floating in the air. Not very high, which was good, because when Keith realized what he had done his concentration snapped sending every child falling to the ground. Only the prince remained floating, with a look on his face that made Keith want to hide.

“I think I broke my ankle!” James screeched because of course, it would be James that landed violently.

Prince Shirogane turned his attention to James, floating to the ground gracefully.

“Let me see,” the prince said. He did something with his hands that made a sigil briefly shine in the air. “There, that should be good as new.”

James looked at the prince with awe. Keith scowled.

“If anyone else has any injuries, please let me know. I’ll heal them before we continue to the next part of the test.”

“Are you sure it’s safe to continue?" Mrs. Griffin asked. A few of the other parents murmured in agreement.

“Of course,” the prince said sweetly. “Mishaps are normal for young magic users. It’s nothing to be worried about.” He flashed a charming smile that was difficult to argue against.

Despite the way Prince Shirogane had stared knowingly at him, it didn’t seem as if anyone else had realized the cause of the ruckus was Keith which was a relief for Keith’s nerves but left him feeling annoyed. They thought Keith had failed the test but he hadn’t. Or had he? Keith clenched his fist. It didn’t matter. The Garrison wasn’t for someone like Keith.

The next two tests involved water—trying to freeze and unfreeze it. Since Keith was unsuccessful in freezing the bowl of water the Prince had set out, the Prince froze it for him for the second part of the test. This test Keith didn't fail, but he didn’t do it quite right either. The intention was to turn the ice back into water but Keith had melted the ice so thoroughly there was no water left in the bowl.

Keith expected to see disappointment on the prince’s face but instead his smile was so bright it was blinding. Keith felt his face turn red, unused to anyone looking at him as the prince did.

After the tests with water came tests that, Keith realized, corresponded with Earth and Nature. The earth test Keith couldn’t manage at all, much to his disappointment, but for the test of nature Keith made a row of flowers bloom that set off James in a fit of jealousy as until then the rose he had changed from red to pink had been the source of much praise.

The final test was Fire.

Keith watched as if in a haze as the prince made a candle light without touching it. The elation he had felt from showing James up with the row of blooming flowers was gone, replaced with an overwhelming numbness. He felt as if he was underwater, but the water thick and sticky like honey making it impossible for him to swim to the surface before he drowned. He stared blankly at the candlestick the prince handed to him, his mind in another place and time.

“James has always had a knack for magic. His grandmother was a hedgewitch, you see.” From the fog came the croaky voice of the village head.

“Ah, of course. He definitely has promise. But I was wondering about the other boy.”

“Who, Keith?” The village head made a dismissive sound. “He wouldn’t fit in at the Garrison. He’s half-wild. The village has tried its best to take care of him after his father passed away, but we’ve had little success in taming him.”

Keith clenched his teeth as the village head described him like he was some sort of animal. No, not _like_. He _was_ an animal to her, a creature less than human that the village had to put up with because to their misfortune Keith hadn’t died in the fire that had claimed his father’s life. Keith was almost fifteen, at which point he would be old enough for the village to properly exile. He should leave before giving them the chance; they didn’t deserve the satisfaction of hurting him.

The candle began to melt in Keith’s hand. Whatever fondness he had seen from the prince would be gone now that the village head had explained all the ways Keith wasn’t worth anyone’s time. He imagined the prince would avoid looking at him now that he knew the truth or worse—look at him with pity.

The prince had left a knapsack of belongings on the ground. Keith took the storm raging inside of him and used it to set the knapsack on fire.

Keith’s triumph was short-lived. The knapsack burned too quickly, turning to ash in seconds as the fire started spreading. There were shouts and screams as the villagers ran from the rapidly growing fire.

It was so much like that night.

Keith couldn’t look away from the flames. They sang to him as they danced, his blood calling back in response. He craved the feeling of the flames on his skin as much as he was afraid of them.

A strong hand grabbed his shoulder. He expected the hand to pull him away to safety but instead, it held him in place.

“Can you put it out?” the prince asked calmly.

Keith turned to look at him and all at once the music of the flames changed into the ordinary sound of a fire. “I—“ Could he? The flames wanted to grow, spread from the village to the forest and beyond.

“If you won’t, I will.” The prince let go of Keith’s shoulder and took a step back.

“Wait!” Keith said. He looked at the flames once more and heard their music. He imagined that music going silent and with an unnatural abruptness the fire was snuffed out.

“Hmm,” the prince said.

With the fire gone, the villagers began to return. At first, assuming the prince had saved them, they fell to their knees to thank him. He ignored them as he made complicated sigils in the air and told them they should be thanking Keith. At that, Keith felt a surge of shame.

“Thank Keith?” James screeched. “He’s the one that set the fire! I saw him—he melted his candle and when that wasn’t enough to show off he got reckless and set a fire that almost killed us all!”

“There was never any danger,” Prince Shirogane snapped. “I had the fire under control. And”—the sigils flared—“I knew I could repair anything that burned, more or less.” Everywhere the fire had touched glowed brightly in the same violet hue of Shiro’s sigils; Keith watched as the violet faded and with it all evidence of the fire. The village was exactly as it was before the flames had ravaged.

As much as the villagers had taken to the prince, Keith could see in their eyes that he hadn’t convinced them of anything. He was a burden to them as it was, an unwanted thing they were saddled with and now he had given them a valid reason to be rid of him. They were almost gleeful to discover their hatred of him was justified; he was a danger to them after all. He couldn’t even disagree with their assessment. He _was_ a wild, dangerous thing and people were right to be afraid of him. He would inevitably hurt them.

Keith, with a speed he hadn’t known he possessed, ran from the village, grabbing the prince’s horse in the process. Keith navigated them into the forest, past the well-worn path of the main road and into the wilds only Keith knew.

⚜

Keith would hang for this. Stealing a horse was bad enough but stealing a prince’s horse was unforgivable. Keith fretted throughout the night, unable to sleep for more than a few moments without waking up in a panic.

Prince Shirogane’s horse was an unusually calm black stallion; it let Keith weave flowers in its mane without a single complaint. If Keith had to die for stealing a horse, he was glad at least it was one worth dying for.

He led the stallion to a small creek he used to play in as a child. Keith splashed cold water on his face as the stallion drank and nearly fell into the water in surprise when a deep, friendly voice came from behind him.

“You know he’s meant to be warhorse. Not that he doesn’t look lovely with flowers in his mane. Don’t you look lovely, dear Black?”

“Black?”

Prince Shirogane’s cheeks colored. “I was a child when I named him. A not very creative child.”

“Are you going to have me hanged?”

“You’re very direct.”

Keith stood up and leaned against Black for comfort. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for it. It’s refreshing. And no, I’m not going to have you hanged. Or flayed or beheaded or any other punishment spinning around in that head of yours. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I burned down the village and stole your horse.”

“Last I checked the village was fine and I’m not sure how you could have stolen my horse when he’s right here in front of me.”

“What do you want from me?” Keith asked because there was always a catch when it came to kindness.

“I want you to become a mage at the Garrison.”

Keith laughed. The prince did not.

“After everything I did you want me to come to the Garrison? Didn’t you hear what the village head said? I’m a wild thing that can’t be tamed. It’s a waste of time trying.”

“I don’t want to tame you.” The prince stepped forward until he was an arm’s length from Keith. “I want you at the Garrison _because_ of what you did. Because of what you _could_ do with a little training. I wasn’t lying exactly when I said I had the fire under control. But to snuff it out as you did? The sigils it would have taken me—and you did it with just a thought! Yes, I want you at the Garrison and if you don’t want to join then I’ll have to quit and teach you myself.”

“How do you know it wasn’t a fluke?”

“That kind of magic isn’t a fluke.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“You’re right. I don’t. But I don’t think the villagers do either. They just think they do. Don’t let them decide who you are.” He held out his hand.

The moment they touched a pleasant shock ran through Keith. He didn’t know what it meant or if the prince had felt it too, but if he did, he didn’t say anything to Keith about it.

“Come with me to the city at least. From there you can decide if you want to join the Garrison, find work, or settle down in another village.” Prince Shirogane rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t recommend staying in this one? As I’m fairly certain the villagers want you dead. Just a feeling I got. Kind of a hostile place, your village. Set a little fire and suddenly you’re public enemy number one.”

“You’re the strangest prince I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve met a lot of princes then?”

Keith blinked, uncertain if the prince was being serious. “Well, no.”

“Then I accept your apology. Prince Matthew is definitely much stranger than I am.”

The prince, to Keith’s surprise, had already gathered Keith’s things. Keith didn’t know how to feel about that. There was a warmth building in him but it didn’t feel like anger.

“That’s a very beautiful dagger you have.”

“It was my mother’s, I think.” He was allergic to the blade but as long as he was careful only to touch the hilt he was able to use it. Not that he wanted to tell the prince he used an ornate heirloom as a hunting knife.

“My parents passed when I was a child, from the plague, though you probably know that already.” Keith nodded. The story was common knowledge in the kingdom. The prince had fallen ill as well; his recovery was said to have been a miracle. “I don’t remember them well.”

Keith knew what the prince was trying to do. “Listen, Your Highness—“

“It’s Shiro.”

“Huh?”

“My name. And if we’re going to get to the nearest inn before nightfall, we’re going to have to use Black to get there.” Shiro saddled their bags with nimble fingers.

“Huh?”

“Come on,” The prince—Shiro said as he held out his hand. “I promise I won’t let you fall.”

There was no shock this time when they touched, but his back and head tingled, almost like an itch. He quickly put it out of his mind, too distracted by Shiro’s body against his as they navigated out of the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i watched maleficent 2 and it wasn't great but i could NOT get "dark fey" (that's the movie spelling apparently) keith out of my head. I DON'T EXPECT THIS TO BE TOO LONG (famous last words). it's not supposed to be super plot-y (more famous last words).
> 
> chuckles. i'm in danger.


End file.
